October 4, 2026 | Love that Knows

Love that Knows | Philippians 1:9–11

Philippians 1:9–11

And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God. (ESV)

In Philippians 1:9–11, Paul prays for believers to have a love that keeps growing in knowledge and discernment. In Love That Knows, Jed Gillis explains that Christian love is more than affection. It knows people deeply, understands what matters spiritually, and takes initiative for their good. This kind of love produces pure motives, helps others grow without causing them to stumble, and bears abundant fruit through Jesus Christ. Because we are limited, we cannot have deep relationships with everyone, but every believer can take the next step in loving others. As God grows this love in His people, their relationships become a visible display of His grace and bring glory and praise to Him.

Transcript of Love that Knows | Philippians 1:9–11

Introduction

Jed Gillis: I'm gonna go off script a minute. Big shock, right? If you know me well, that's not really that big a surprise.

This morning, I'm thinking a lot about what Brian said from yesterday from our men's breakfast. God wants to change us deeply. And some of you have preached often, some of you haven't ever preached or taught, and that's okay. But one of the things that happens when I stand up here a lot is God has worked in my heart for something that I long to see change in me, and I look out and I see a lot of faces that I love, and I long for God to work deeply in all of us.

And one of the things that can be hard, whether it's me looking at myself or you looking at yourself, or me looking at you or you looking at me, or looking at brothers and sisters, is when it seems like growth is so slow. It's one of the things that's hard. It's the reason God said, "Don't grow weary in well-doing," because we grow weary in well-doing, right?

My prayer this morning is that God would change us deeply. Not just quickly, not superficially. My prayer this morning is that God would change us so that...

I remember probably almost 20 years ago now, I remember one guy prayed after a service. He prayed with a group of people, including me. I remember what he prayed. Do you remember prayers from, like, 20 years ago? I don't remember most of them. I remember what this guy said. He said, "God, change us so deeply that long after we've forgotten what words are said today, we lived them." That's my prayer.

By the time you get probably two days from now, you'll have forgotten most of the words I said. By the time we get a year from now, I'll have forgotten most of the words I said. My prayer is that God changes us so that we live them. These words can be forgotten; that's fine. Let's remember our God and let's be changed.

I know we prayed a lot this morning. I'd like to pray again.

Opening Prayer

Jed Gillis: God, you know every situation, every pressure, every question, every technical difficulty, every struggle in our souls, every person's situation this morning, you know all of them. And you are working all things so that this group of people that are sitting in this room right here today are all here. You are working all things so that we're looking in Philippians chapter 1. You are working by your Spirit in my heart and in each person's heart in your perfect way.

Help us not to just want superficial surface change. Help us not to just want to feel better about ourselves or to have some kind of little spiritual experience and then go about living the rest of our lives like we always have, but help us to love you deeply and be changed by you.

I pray that that would be true for all of us—for those who are here regularly as part of Berean Bible Church, for those who are visiting, and this may be the only time they sit in this room, Lord, work in each of our hearts by the power of your Word, by your Spirit.

And we'll praise you for it in Jesus' name. Amen.

Our Need for Relationships

Jed Gillis: We live in a world that desperately longs for real community, for real relationships. And I would say, I'm certainly not the only one who would say this, we also live in a world that's really bad at real relationships. Why is that? Well, think about our culture for a minute.

Just, just think about a few modern things. I saw a survey came out this past... I saw it this past week. I don't know when it came out, but I saw it this past week. Said in 1972, something around, according to the survey, 42% of households hosted people in their home at least once a month on average. Take a guess what that number is in 2026. 12%. No wonder we're not as good at relationships.

Oh, not only that, but think about the tech world. How many jobs do we have that now require little to no human interaction? Tons of them. From a book modern anthropologists wrote called Alone Together, talking about technology and how we can be together but be alone. The author said this, "We expect more from technology and less from each other. We are lonely, but we are afraid of relational intimacy. And so from social networks to sociable robots, we're designing technologies that will give us the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship."

No wonder we're not very good at relationships. Think about the way our society says, "You need to love people," and what they mean is you need to tolerate people and let them just disagree with you and think whatever you ha- they happen to want to think.

That's not really a push to love them. That's really a push to leave them alone. Our culture calls that love. Not have deep friendship, just don't tell them they're wrong. That's not friendship.

We live in a culture where we're incredibly mobile. You jump in a car, there's a whole lot of cars here. I don't know, maybe somebody walked, but most people here, you got in a car and you drove. Which is great, I'm glad we have that ability. But it also means you can get in a car and if you say, "I don't really like all the people who are around me. I don't wanna be friends with them. I'm gonna go 45 minutes away to some kind of club of people who really like what you like." You can find people who agree with you and who look a lot more like you, unlike what used to happen, where you pretty much stayed within, you know, depending on how far back you go, a 5 or 10-mile radius of your house.

It also means because we're mobile, we can leave our community if it gets difficult. That wasn't always possible. And then not only do we have these pressures from culture, but we're sinful ourselves. So that means sometimes when we pursue relationships, we end up hurting other people, and they end up hurting us.

And when I say sometimes, I mean all the time, not every instance, of course. But as sinful humans who are relating to one another...

So since we as a culture become worse and worse and worse at real relationships, I realize there are exceptions, I'm speaking generally, but since we are as a culture worse and worse at real relationships, that means the people who really feel that and want good relationships, they keep running into plenty of other people who aren't good at it. So maybe they start to wonder, is it even worth it?

Is it even worth trying to have good relationships if everybody seems to be bad at it and I keep messing them up myself? Maybe real relationships can't happen. Maybe I'm crazy for wanting it. And what we get is this kind of vicious cycle. We get this vicious cycle where the people who really want to connect on a deep relational way, they try, they run into difficulties with that.

It feels like maybe I'm crazy for wanting it. And then we keep going about our lives.

Paul's Prayer: Philippians 1:9–11

Jed Gillis: But that's not what God wants for His people, and that's not what Paul prays for for his people. Would you read with me Philippians 1, starting in verse 9?

And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment so that you may approve what is excellent and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God. That's his prayer.

Love That Abounds

Jed Gillis: That's what we're looking at today is Paul's prayer for the people at Philippi, and by extension, his prayer for God's people, and I hope our prayer for each other. He starts with this, this first what of his prayer, that their love would abound more and more. Now, we could ask probably one of our first questions, wait, love for what?

Love for God? Love for Paul? Love for God's people? And the answer, as usually is the case in the Bible, is yes, all of them, because in the Bible, the biggest question isn't who are the people I'm supposed to love; it's do you love? Think about how Jesus answers the, the rich, young ruler who says, "Oh, and who's my neighbor?"

You guys remember that story? The Good Samaritan? "Oh, who's my neighbor?" He's looking for loopholes, like who am I supposed to love? Who can I not love? That's what he wants to know. And Jesus tells him this whole story, and at the end, he doesn't say, "Okay, now you know who you're supposed to love." He says, "Who do you think was a neighbor to this person?"

Well, the guy who loved him. Right, so you do that. Right? The point isn't decide who you can love and who you don't have to love; the point is show love. The point isn't separate, oh, love for God. Well, I really love God, but I'm not so sure I love His people. That does not work in the New Testament. Paul's just said, in fact, right before this, he says, "God is my witness, how I yearn for you, how I long for you all with the love or the affection of Christ Jesus."

He's like, "The affection of Christ Jesus flows through me to you." So when I love you, it's really about loving Jesus. Right? He says here he wants their love to abound more and more and more. Now, we could, we could go to probably... I, I just did a quick Google search and found like 20 different definitions of love. You guys have probably seen those. There's all kinds of different things. There's lots of different elements of it.

One of them we could use, something like this: actively willing, choosing, and seeking the wellbeing and flourishing of another person. So you say, "I want good for them," basically, "and I'm willing to act on it." That's a good definition. This morning, I want you to think about one specific component, maybe a little different way of saying that. It's a similar idea, but one specific component of love, thinking about it as a combination of initiative and affection.

So illustrated this way, if you think of a young man who's really interested in a young woman, if he never takes any initiative in that relationship, and he comes and tells you, "Oh, I just love her," like, I'm not sure I believe that. Or we're like, "Hey man, start, start taking some initiative." If you come and tell me you just absolutely love God, like, "Oh, how does that look in your life?" "Well, it really doesn't. I just say that I love Him." Like, no, then you don't really love Him then. Initiative, but also affection.

If you come and say, say that that young man, you talk to him, he's like, "Oh, I don't know if I really like, like her, but I like to do things for her." Like, please don't marry her. That's not love. You need both. Now, you could add other elements, I, I, I realize that, but I just want us to think about initiative and affection.

And maybe we could take initiative a little further and say sacrificial initiative or costly initiative. So when you take an opportunity to show love to someone, there's always some kind of cost. Doesn't mean it costs you money. Could be time, energy, emotional energy, opportunity, attention. It costs something.

I have a little four-year-old girl. Some of you have seen her. She's so cute, and she loves it when you just pay attention to her. Literally, you can just pay attention and you don't have to do anything else. Why? Because as children, we understand, we're wired from the beginning, we receive that as love. But sometimes when my brain is spinning on everything else that I could do and ought to do, I gotta do this, this, this, this, attention feels like the most expensive thing to give.

It's costly initiative. I don't necessarily mean risky, by the way, when I say costly. Like, there are things that are costly or sacrificial that aren't risky. If I go out and pay for your lunch, that costs something, but it's not re- really risky. I paid for one meal. If I hand you my credit card and say, "Go buy your lunch," now that's risky. Right?

Risk and cost are not the same thing. I'm not telling you that in order to love somebody, you need to foolishly take every risk you can imagine. I am saying it costs something. So initiative and cost.

I want you to take a minute and think about the initiative side of this in some different situations. Imagine a parent who is eager to meet the needs their children have. Every time their children come and tell them a need, they are ready to meet it excitedly. Let's say, in fact, every time their children come and tell them a, a good desire.

Now, we all know giving children every desire they could possibly want is probably not a good plan. But let's say every time they come with a good desire, you're eager to do it. But that parent never initiates conversation, never looks out for how can I help them when they haven't come and talked to me about it yet? Now, we wouldn't say that's the worst parent in the world, sure. But I don't think any of us would say that is ideal parenting love if it doesn't have initiative.

You could think about that in a husband and wife relationship. Guys, sometimes this is us who's more guilty of this than others, admittedly. Like, "I'll do whatever she asks me to do." How's that work out in your house?

She wants you to notice and take some initiative on it. That's a different kind of love. We all know if I tell you the stories and the examples of that, you go, "Yeah, abounding love always has an initiative element built into it."

And that's what Paul prays for the Philippians. "I pray that your love," yes, for God, sure. But in this context, the whole context of this first 11 verses, and really all the way through into chapter two, the whole context is about the relationship God's people have with each other. "That your love may abound more and more."

And we could probably to get the feel of what he's saying, may abound more, and more, and more, and more, and more, and more, and more. And if you counted how many that was, that wasn't the point. May abound, may overflow more and more. Wherever you are in your love for God and His people this morning, you say, "I've loved God and His people for 60 years," great.

My prayer is that it abounds more and more and more. You never go, "Oh, check the box. I've got love figured out. I've got it all down." If you're like, "I've just barely started maybe loving a couple of God's people," well, let's pray that that love abounds more and more and more and more. That's Paul's prayer as he looks at the Philippians.

I want you to notice too, you don't need to beat yourself up about this. Some of you are wired this way. You'll hear me talk about love this morning, and you're gonna be tempted to be like, "Oh, I just don't love anybody like I should. My love's terrible." And you think that's, like, the only way to receive conviction.

That's not true. Notice, just read back before this. What has he said about them? "Every time I think about you, I am grateful for you, and I praise God. I thank Him." Why? Because of their partnership, their friendship, their love in the Gospel. Like, every time I think about you, I think how awesome you guys are at loving God and loving each other.

And then he prays, "And I pray that your love may abound more and more and more and more and more." You can hear God's word this morning and think, "Man, I wanna grow in loving His people," without thinking, "I'm so terrible at loving His people."

In fact, I'd suggest if your reflex is always to think, "I'm terrible at this," you're really focused more on yourself than on loving them anyway. So if you say, "You know, I love God's people. I wanna love them more," good. You're exactly where he wants you to be.

Knowledge and Discernment

Jed Gillis: He prays that their love may abound more and more and more. And then says, "With knowledge and all discernment." Now when, when I was growing up, I heard people teach this, and it, it kind of felt like this to me. It felt like really, really love people, but not too much, 'cause there's some crazy ways to love people.

That's kind of the way I caught it. I'm not sure that's what anybody actually taught me. But it was like, well, really love people, but knowledge says sometimes you shouldn't love them. Okay, that's not what Paul's doing. He's saying he wants their love to abound more and more, and he's saying in order to have real love, here's some things you need: knowledge, or we could say the nuance of the words like full knowledge, like deep, full knowledge; and discernment or deep insight. There's no place in godly love for God's people for blind love.

That's not his point. He's not saying, "Imagine they're all perfect and just don't let anything convince you otherwise, and love them." He's not saying that. He's actually saying you need knowledge and discernment or insight in order to genuinely love other people. We kinda know this instinctively. If you're going to know somebody and love them, you need to know, like, what makes them tick.

What really encourages them? Where, what are their strengths? You also need to know the other side. What are their weaknesses? Where do they struggle? Where do they sin? You need to know that in order to really love. Again, let me talk in some contexts where we will probably instinctively know this. If you talk to that young man about his fiancee, and he goes on and on about how fantastic his fiancee is: "Oh, tell me about your fiancee's strengths. Like, what's good about her?" "Well, I don't really know anything, but I mean, I love her." But that's not right. That's a problem. If you say ... Now, we, we might, we might not use these words, but if you were to talk with that young man and you go, "Hey, what really just brings her life? What makes her flourish?" It's like, "I don't really know, but she makes me feel good, so whatever."

That's not love. It's not abounding love, at least. I think we all know that instinctively. If you ask that young man, probably some of you have had this conversation, I certainly have in premarital counseling world, "What's your fiance's weaknesses?" "Oh, I don't think they have any."

Now, we might think it's cute. We might think, "Okay, you'll, you'll get there. You'll figure it out." But none of us thinks, "Wow, that is the perfect example of abounding love." We don't think that. If we come back after 10 years and they still say that, you're kinda like, "Huh, that's weird."

I'm pretty sure you can love your spouse of 10 or 20 years a whole lot better because you know their weaknesses, and because you've seen them struggle, and because you know their strengths and you know what brings them life. Knowledge helps you love.

Knowledge is not blind. G.K. Chesterton, like he usually does, very succinctly said this: "Love is not blind, it is bound." It is tied together. You're connected to somebody. That's what he means by bound, especially in marriage. You're a covenant commitment. "Love is not blind, it is bound. And the more it is bound, the less it is blind."

That's true in our marriage experience, isn't it? When you first met them after, you know, two weeks, it might've been really blind. After five years, it's not so blind, but it's a lot more bound.

Paul prays that they would know strengths and weaknesses. Now, he's not talking in marriage. I'm using that as an illustration so that you see that is how love works. Now, think about your brothers and sisters in this room, or maybe not in this room today, but in this body. Think about your brothers and sisters.

You're connected to them as members of a body. If you're gonna really love them, you're not gonna be blind to their strengths, to their weaknesses, to their sins, to their virtues. You're not gonna be blind to that. In fact, the fact that you know some of those things about them gives you the opportunity to really love them.

We know this with parents and children. When you know the weaknesses of your child, you're better able to love them, not worse. By the way, that works the other way too, kids. You know a few weaknesses of your parents. And you're better able to love them because of that.

Too many times people in churches, especially in our context where there's a million churches in the Southeast United States, it's so easy to find other communities. We get into relationships, we learn some weaknesses, and just when we finally could really love them because we know those weaknesses, we pull the escape cord and get out.

Paul prays that your love will abound more and more and more in knowledge and discernment, knowing the people you love—knowing what's good, knowing what's bad, knowing their sins, knowing their successes, knowing all of that. When you know those things, you have the opportunity to love them more.

Now, I understand there's a time to say, "I'm gonna move to a different assembly of believers." Of course. I understand there's a time to say, "This relationship doesn't have to continue." Of course. But let's not think that the fact that it gets difficult and the fact that we know some of the weaknesses of those people means we've gotta leave as fast as we can.

That's the opportunity to love in knowledge and discernment.

Knowing What Matters

Jed Gillis: So why does Paul pray these things? We'll continue. He gives you his reasons. "So that you may approve what is excellent." We could paraphrase this this way. We could say, "So that you may genuinely and confidently know what is best." So you'll know what is of deep spiritual value.

If you have this kind of, let's combine knowledge, discernment, and love, so I'll call it perceptive love. If you have abounding perceptive love, that results in a right understanding of what's really spiritually valuable. That's what's supposed to happen. He prays that your love will grow more and more and more.

It'll be a perceptive love so that you know what's really important. So when you talk with your brothers and sisters and you're trying to love them, you know what's really important to talk about. You know when it's really important to say, "Hey, I think you're blind to this sin, and let's talk about it." And you know when it's, there's just a preference difference.

We do some things differently, and that's okay. How are you gonna know that? Because you have an abounding perceptive love for God and His people, and God's Spirit is at work in you so that you may approve what is excellent or know what is genuinely good. And he gives you another reason right after that.

Pure and Blameless

Jed Gillis: And so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ. Purity here, it's not... Both of these words are not the normal word that's used in the New Testament for pure and blameless. There's different nuances. Pure here, Paul uses it in 2 Corinthians to talk about unmixed motives. He says, "Look, I'm ministering to you all not out of mixed motives. I'm ministering to you all out of pure motives."

So here he's saying, "I pray that you have abounding perceptive love so that your motives in interacting with one another won't be self-centered, won't be selfish." Won't be trying to posture my pride so everybody thinks I'm good, but we'll be love. We'll be pure and blameless.

There it's, it's not the idea of like, "I am perfect in all the things that I do." It's the idea that nobody can look at you and say, "They made me stumble."

Blameless is in that sense of having not caused this kind of offense that makes someone stumble. He prays that your love, your, uh, love will be abounding, perceptive love for one another so that you'll be able to look around and say, "I'm trying to help all these people in their spiritual walk. I'm not causing them to trip up."

I hope that we all want that. Paul says what you have to have if you want that is love—abounding, perceptive love.

God's Work in Us

Jed Gillis: Now maybe if you were with us last week, you heard me say over and over and over again, God finishes what He starts. That's what verse six says. So maybe you think, "Wait, Paul, why are you praying all this? You already said God was gonna do it anyway. This sounds hard." Why do I need the hard work of love and insight if, if God's just gonna complete it?

Well, because he said the good work that he completes in you. How do you think he's going to do that? By giving you love. By transforming you so that you want love. Remember we started off with this isn't about shallow transformation; this is about deep transformation. The work God started in you, he's going to complete by making you love more and more and more and more and more in knowledge and discernment so that more, more and more you'll go, "Oh, I see what really matters. I see what's really important, what's best, and I wanna be pure in my motives and blameless towards my brothers and sisters."

That's the work God's doing in you, but how does he do it? He works within you.

If you ever have an impulse, maybe this morning, I hope this morning as we listen to God's Word, I hope this is part of your impulse that says, "I really want to love God's people more." That is God working in you. Satan does not want that. And you in your flesh, apart from the Spirit of God, do not want that.

If you ever say, "I want to love God's people more," that is evidence of the work God is performing and will complete in you. And as later in the book, we'll get there, Philippians 2 says, "Work out your own salvation because it is God who is at work within you both to will or to desire it and to do it." God is at work, so work where God is working.

A Fruitful Life

Jed Gillis: Pursue love like that. He gives you another purpose. So the first one was so that you'll be better able to understand what's really best. The second one, so that you'll be pure and blameless. The third one, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God.

He wants your life to be fruitful. Don't you want that? Do you ever look at your life and, and probably not for long stretches, but maybe for short stretches, you're like, "Ah, what's the point?"

That works, by the way, at all kinds of different ages. You could be in the middle of middle school and you're like, "I mean, eventually I'm gonna get out and life's gonna really start, but what's the point right now?" You could have small kids at home and you're like, "I'm cleaning up the same toys for the eight millionth time. I'm changing a diaper again. I want this to be fruitful." Or maybe you finish your career and you retire and you're like, "What do I do now?" Some of you that's not a problem, but some of you have that question.

I want my life to be fruitful. I don't want my life to have been fruitful, I want it to be fruitful. It's part of Paul's prayer that they would have the fruit that comes through Jesus Christ.

Jesus gives us, we've already talked about it, we've sung about it, Jesus gives us righteousness, a right standing with God through faith in Him. And that right relationship to God results in fruit. It results in fruitful things in your life that you can point to and go, "Oh, that's good fruit. That's good fruit. That's good fruit."

Galatians gives us some ideas of that, one of which is, the very first one, love. He prays that they would be filled with this fruit.

For example, when you are overwhelmed with the forgiveness God has given you to give you a right relationship with Him, that should and probably does actually, when you really love that forgiveness, it makes you more forgiving. When you really are just overwhelmed with all the things God has forgiven you and somebody comes and they do something which is small in comparison to you, you're like, "Oh, I get to forgive like Jesus forgave me."

Filled with the fruit. That's fruit. And he says, "Filled with fruit." He doesn't just say that you have fruit like, uh, we have some, some fruit bushes in our yard, and sometimes they have these little tiny berries and you're like, "I don't know if I really wanna eat those. They don't look very good." We also have some blackberries that when they produce it right, they produce these gigantic juicy blackberries. He's not asking that God would give you these kind of like shriveled up fruit that somebody has to kind of squint and go, "Is that a blackberry? I'm not sure."

He's asking that you would be filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus, that you'd be super fruitful, abundantly fruitful. The kind of fruitful that people would look at your life and go, "Man, I want my life to be like that." That's Paul's prayer.

For God's Glory

Jed Gillis: And if we got through all that, if Paul prayed for you that you'd have abounding perceptive love, knowledge of what's spiritually best, pure motives, blamelessness toward others, and a super fruitful life, if that was it, and if at the end of it you say, "Good, now people can look at me and praise me," that's not Paul's point at all, 'cause this last phrase is here in verse 11, "To the glory and praise of God."

He prays that God will do all of these things so that you and I and all the people around us will look at us and say, "God's amazing."

And by the way, I think they really would. Sometimes we doubt that. I think actually when God's people show this kind of love ... Remember the things we talked about at the beginning, how our, our culture longs for real relationships and longs for real love? I think when people around us see Christians genuinely love one another, God is glorified.

They might not decide, they might not decide to trust him. They might not be converted right then. But it's amazing to people who don't know Jesus when God's people genuinely love one another, when they genuinely forgive, when they genuinely care for one another. That blows people's minds. To the praise and glory of God.

Examining Our Love

Jed Gillis: Now I wanna take a few minutes really to, to draw back and think about the whole context of this first 11 verses in Philippians. Fair warning, I am going to meddle a little bit, but I promise the questions I'm asking are only the questions God has used to meddle in my heart. And God has the right to meddle where he wants to, to change us.

As we go through this section, we have a glimpse into deep friendship between God's people, into the, the mindset. Remember Paul said, "It's right for me to think this way, to have this mindset"? We have a glimpse into this mindset for God's people.

So the first question I wanna ask, do you continually remember, thank God for, and experience joy because of God's people?

That's the mindset. Is that your experience? It's not always mine. I've wrestled with God about things this week. I'm sure I'll wrestle with God about things this afternoon and next week. But do we love God's people like that? What does your schedule say about your love for others?

And remember, we're supposed to love God's people with the affection of Christ Jesus. So what does your schedule say about God's love for them? Because your schedule makes a comment about that.

Now, please try to restrain what at least I feel the natural defensiveness that could come up right here. I get it. I'm busy. There's a lot of good things to do. I can't love everybody. All those things. Absolutely all true. I will come right back to them in just a minute. But before we do that, let's sit with the questions and let God do his work.

What does your schedule say about your love for others? What does your personal openness say about your love for others? Remember earlier in the text, knowledge of someone is connected to loving them. We don't fully love without knowing someone and having insight into who they are, at least at some level.

So if when you interact with others, if you're closed off and you don't wanna share of yourself, you aren't fully loving them, and you're denying them the opportunity to love you.

Again, I know the defensive questions that can come up. "I'm just not good with people. I've been hurt," all those things. I'll come back to some of that in just a minute. But don't let that take you away from the question. Unfortunately, in a sinful world, I think many times we make the calculation in our minds, maybe not actively, but we make it, and we say, "I'm not going to open myself up to others." And we probably know that means we won't have a really deep relationship, but you also won't hurt me.

I know that's hard. I know there's a million reasons and a million questions, but I'd ask you to sit with the question, what does your openness say about your love for others? Because when you know someone's weaknesses and their sins and their strengths and their motivations, you are better able to love them, not less.

And I asked this question last week, I wanna come back to it. If Jesus loved you like you love your brothers and sisters, would you be satisfied with that?

Now, I really believe that for most, if not all of us, as we go through this text, as we talk about love, as I ask some of those questions, I really believe the Spirit probably pokes and prods on each one of our hearts on something related to loving your brothers and sisters. I also believe, like I said, many things came up in your mind, so I wanna take a minute to, to talk about that.

Obstacles to Loving Others

Jed Gillis: Uh, these counterarguments range from sinful arguments, "I'm just too selfish to love them like that." We usually don't say that one out loud, but sometimes we feel it. Sometimes they're more personality things, and it's like, "Well, I'm, I'm just not good in crowds. I'm more introverted." I... All these things. Okay, we can talk about those.

Sometimes they're realistic and even helpful things. "I'm limited." Say, "Pastor Jed, you talk about my schedule. I mean, I'm, I am busy, and I do love people, and I can't love everybody." Not in a deep, costly, time-intensive way, of course. Of course you can't. So let's talk about a few of those things. First, you're not Jesus.

We can all be glad for that. Your schedule is not infinite. You cannot love every member of the body equally. You cannot spend equal amounts of time. You cannot meet the relational needs of everybody. Of course. None of us think that. You can't love everyone like this, but we should all have the eager desire to be part of the body that is loving part of the body like that.

And we, as a body, we have a responsibility for each part to be working to build each other up in love. You are not asked to be the entire body of Christ for Berean Bible Church. Nobody can do that. It doesn't matter if you've got a title of pastor or elder in front of your name. It doesn't matter if you are here within... you came in the last two weeks. It doesn't matter if you've been here for 60 years. Nobody can carry all of that.

But if you're part of the body, you can be part of it. And we should want to be part of it.

We can't deeply meet relational needs for everyone, but we can include others. I think sometimes we're afraid we will lose deep relationships if we try to reach out and add more relationships into our lives. I'll just tell you from my experience and from what I see in other people, I don't think that's true.

I think what usually happens is the people who are the best at deep relationships are the most eager to include others. Just think about the people you know. I know some people who are so good at having deep friendships, and when they run into somebody new, they want to get to know them. There's a balance.

You go, "I've got to still be able to have these deep relationships." Sure. That's important. But I find that being good at deep relationships with a few people makes you want it more with more people.

Include others. I would ask you to think about, you could look around the room, but that might make people awkward, so don't. Think about the room. There's a lot of people who are fairly new, who have been here, come in the last four years. There's also a lot of people who have been here for longer, too much longer than four years.

I wanna ask you, if you've been here longer than four years and haven't taken initiative to get to know and love people who have come in the last four years, what does that say about your love for them?

Told you I was gonna meddle a little.

Flip it around. If you've been here for two years and haven't taken initiative to get to know and love people who have been here for more than 10, what does that say about your love for them? Again, not everybody. You can't know everybody. You're not Jesus. But we're called to have love that abounds more and more and more.

Maybe an objection comes up, "Oh, I've tried and people just don't go deep in relationship." Like I said, we live in a culture that's bad at relationships and has a lot of pressures that make us worse at relationships. We underestimate the importance of time to build friendships. We underestimate the impact of the culture on us in our friendships.

We underestimate the value of walking through hard things together. I would tell you some of my best friends are people that I have walked through some really hard stuff with them. And I don't just mean hard situations, I mean sometimes we butted heads and we had to talk through some stuff.

But we also underestimate the power of the Spirit and His desire to use us. You might try to build a relationship with somebody and you go, "It just doesn't seem like it goes very deep." And you need God's wisdom, and there are times you say, "Hey, I need to pursue a different relationship." But there are times you say God is going to use you to break through some things for that person, and God wants you there connecting with them relationally so that they will grow.

Remember, when you know something that's a weakness or a sin or a struggle in somebody else, that's your opportunity to love them.

It's okay that not every friendship you try to build becomes your best friend. One study says the average person meets 80,000 people in their lifetime. How many best friends do you think you can have? Not 80,000. It's okay that not all of them become your deepest relationships. In fact, every deep r- friendship, I was thinking about this this morning, every deep friendship I would say, "Oh, I have a pretty deep relationship with this person," there was a point where, where I thought, "There is no way we'll be great friends."

Every one of those people, except my wife, that's the only exception. I can tell you that story later.

Maybe you think, "Well, I've tried to love people, and they've hurt me." Is that really a surprise? We live in a world full of sinful people. You know what you've done in relationships. Is it really surprising? No. A- and apart from the gospel, that's where it would end. I've been hurt, forget it. I don't want relationships.

But instead, you say, "I have a perfect love from Jesus, and that's why I can forgive. My soul can have rest in Him. That's why I can love even people who hurt me." Understand there's wisdom. I'm not talking about abusive contexts, those kinds of situations. I'm talking about when somebody has relationally hurt you. You're like, "Well, forget it. I don't want any part of that." Well then you're not gonna have very many deep relationships, and by many I mean any 'cause we're sinful and people will wrong you from time to time.

Maybe you say, "Well, I want to love people and I want deep relationships. I don't know how to do it." First off, good, and say, "God, help me." Second, give it a try and jump in and try talking with people and see how it goes. Third, maybe the most important one, find somebody in the body of believers here or another believer that you know and say, "Hey, I wanna build deeper relationships with somebody. You seem really good at it. Help me. How do you do that?"

And if they're good at relationships and love Jesus, they are glad to have that conversation with you as they can, and they want to help you think through, "How can I do that? How can I listen to people and love them and care for them in wisdom and in knowledge?"

Taking the Next Step

Jed Gillis: So this morning, here's the invitation for you.

If God has started in you a love for Him and His people, no matter how small that seems right now, pray for that love to abound more and more and more.

Take the next step. Don't try to be like some super relational person. Don't try to have 80 million close friends. Don't say, "How do I get from step one to step five million?" Just stay wherever you are. If God's put this little bit of love and you're like, "All right. I think I'm on, like, a, a three out of 10," say, "God, how do I take the next step to be a three and a half?"

You think you're a seven and a half. How do I take the next step to be an eight? He prays that their love, wherever it is, would abound more and more and more and more and more. God, help me to take the next step in love towards God's people. You are unlikely to wake up tomorrow morning and be a totally different person.

But if you have the Holy Spirit working in you, you are 100% likely to go through your life and be gradually transformed to be more like Jesus. So praise God for that and step into where God is working.

So pray that God will do that in you. Second, let the love of Jesus motivate you to take a step of initiative and affection towards your brothers and sisters.

That can look like a lot of things. It can look like organized things. It can look like you show up on Sunday morning and say, "God, who do you want me to love today? Who do you want me to go have a conversation with? Maybe it's somebody I normally do, maybe it's somebody different." It can look like the organized things we do, and Sunday morning you can do that.

At Bible studies you can do that. At Awana, at Wednesday nights you can do that. At Grace Marriage you can do that. At community group you can do that. At retreats you can do that. But go into those opportunities not thinking, "How do I come and be a consumer and get something that makes me feel better?" but, "How do I love somebody? How do I take initiative to show this kind of love?"

In a context of a church, you can also take initiative to, to help run some of those things or organize them. We just had a perfect example. We had a Wednesday night meal this past week because Judy Francis said, "Hey, I wanna do that to help serve the body so the body is able to love one another in fellowship in that time."

That's somebody in this body taking initiative to say, "I would like to do this so I can love them so they can love others."

Talk about Grace Marriage, and Todd and Ann and the team have put work into that to say, "We wanna take initiative to set something up so that these people can love each other more." Taking initiative is an act of love.

But it doesn't have to be at the programs and the activities and the organizations. It can be initiative towards others in, in organic ways.

"Hey, you wanna go get coffee sometime? You wanna go take a walk together? You wanna go eat lunch?" You wanna come over to my house? You wanna go do something together? There's a million ways. A text message, "How are you doing?" I kind of ragged on technology earlier, okay? But it is so easy to initiate a thought towards someone at least a little bit and say, "Hey, I haven't seen you in a while. You doing okay?" That may feel really small, but some people have done it for some of you, and it has tremendously changed your week.

Love one another by taking initiative to show that love.

If you wanna know how you can best help Berean Bible Church to be healthy, if you wanna know how you can best encourage the leadership of Berean Bible Church, take initiative to genuinely love others for the glory of God. I guarantee you that's the most encouraging, encouraging thing you can do for leadership.

That's the best thing you can do to help Berean Bible Church be healthy. Take initiative to love one another, to connect with new people, to build deep relationships from the ones you have. Ask God to strengthen you to make that kind of love the reality in this body, to make it part of your lifestyle, not something you show up on Sunday morning and, and think about for an hour, but something that becomes the way that you live. Love one another.

I wanna invite you just to take a moment and respond to God in prayer. I ask God to work in you and in this body that we would take the kind of loving initiative, abounding perceptive love that Paul prays for here, that that would characterize us. Do business with God as you need to. Take a moment to pray, and then I'll pray.

As I pray, I'm just going to paraphrase Paul's prayer for us.

Closing Prayer

Jed Gillis: Jesus, it's my prayer that we all grow in costly initiative and affection for one another, knowing our strengths and our sins so that we genuinely know what is best and what is spiritually important, so that we have the purest of motives with one another, so that we don't cause anyone to stumble in their spiritual walk, but that we as individuals and we as a body would be absolutely full of the beautiful fruit of love that comes through Jesus Christ, so that all of the people around us would praise you as the infinitely worthy God. In Jesus' name. Amen.

I'd like to ask you to do something before we sing. If there are things about that that God has stirred in your heart, if there are questions, if there are things you say, "I'd like to think more about this," if you wanna think more about it, probably some people in the body do, too. So I'd invite you to jot down questions, observations, anything like that.

I would love for you to hand those to me or send them to me at some point. I will not share who they came from in any context. But one thing we do is we have a follow-up podcast to our sermons, and I would love to have the questions that came to your mind, the thoughts, the difficulties, the encouragements, whatever.

I promise it will be anonymous to anybody but me, and if you wanna stick it anonymously in my office, you can do that, too. But I would love for us as a body to think about how we can grow in that kind of love for one another and to continue that conversation. I'll invite you to sing. We're gonna sing a song.

It's really to the tune of Oh, for a Thousand Tongues to Sing, but it's different words because we have shockingly few songs about loving one another actually, and this is one of those songs that has a couple verses to remind us of the importance of our bond to one another. So I invite you to stand and let's sing.